Albums still challenge for Alan Jackson

As he nears 25 years of being one of country music’s top recording artists, Alan Jackson maintains that each album “is still a challenge to me.”

And the guy certainly knows how to challenge himself.

Consider his latest release, 2012’s “Thirty Miles West.” Sure, it has a lot to live up to given Jackson’s track record of nearly 60 million albums sold worldwide and more than 50 Top 10 country hits. But coming directly after the 2010 compilation “34 Number Ones,” which defined Jackson’s phenomenal success, put just a little more pressure on the new album.

“It’s always been that way, though. Every album, it’s just tough to follow the last one,” says Jackson, 54, a Georgia native who moved to Nashville during the mid-’80s, starting in the mailroom of The Nashville Network before signing a deal in 1989. “A lot of people suffer after they have the first big album. It’s always hard to follow that one.”

So what’s Jackson’s secret?“I’ve been lucky,” the married father of three daughters says with a chuckle. “People ask me, ‘How are you staying alive and doing this all the time?,’ and the first thing I learned was you have to have a career song, one song that launches you and keeps you going. Once you have that, you can just kind of keep rolling.

“So I had ‘Here in the Real World’ (in 1989); that was my first hit, my career song. Then I keep having those career songs — ‘Chattahoochee’ (1993), then ‘It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere’ (a 2003 duet with Jimmy Buffett). Every few years I’ll have a regular run of songs that are nice songs, and all of a sudden I’ll have a big one that keeps the first going again. You can’t plan ’em, but you sure do appreciate them when they come along.”

Jackson’s strategy for “Thirty Miles West” — which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard country chart and No. 2 on the Billboard 200 — was fairly straightforward. “You’re just trying to find a great song,” explains Jackson, who wrote six of the album’s 13 tracks. But that, not surprisingly, sounds easier than it actually is.

“You’re looking for a mixture of topics,” Jackson explains. “Most songs are about love or lost love, and it’s hard to find songs that aren’t about that. To be able to mix that up so every song is not about your broken heart, it’s hard to do.

“I always try to keep the (up) tempos and ballads balanced out, so you don’t get too one-sided or anything. But it’s always about the song and finding the best ones. That’s the challenge that never changes.”

Jackson didn’t have to look too far to find the album’s big hit, “So You Don’t Have to Love Me Anymore,” which is nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Country Song. It was co-written by Adam Wright of the duo The Wrights, who also happens to be Jackson’s nephew. But the singer is quick to note that it’s not on there solely out of nepotism.

“I knew it was a great song when I heard it,” says Jackson, a two-time Grammy winner himself. “Every time I’m cutting (an album) he’ll bring me a disc of his (songs) and I encourage him to write stuff. And this one was just a well-written, great song. That’s why it’s nominated for a Grammy.

“I called (Wright) back and said, ‘I love that song. Are you sure you want to give it to me?’ He’s trying to get his career going, and I told him, ‘You might want to push that to one of the new artists. It might get more attention with them than it will with me.’ But he said he wanted me to do it, and I’m sure glad he did.”

Elsewhere on the album, Jackson writes about his wife, Denise’s, battle with cancer in “When I Saw You Leaving (For Nisey),” while the nostalgic “Dixie Highway,” a duet with Zac Brown, was inspired during a wintertime visit to Florida.

“I always knew it was there, but one day I happened to look at that sign and said, ‘Man, I need to write a song about that,” Jackson recalls. “I didn’t realize till then that it runs from way up where you are (in Detroit) through the United States and has been there for, like, 100 years or something.

“It’s just kind of a fun, growing-up song, but it was interesting to learn all that.”

Jackson is also experiencing a learning curve on the business side with “Thirty Miles West.” It came out on his own Alan’s Country Records (ACR) label; the imprint was created for some specialty projects he released earlier in his career — as well as The Wrights’ 2005 debut album — but this is Jackson’s first mainstream release under the moniker, as part of a “partnership” with EMI Nashville. He’s quick to note that “it’s not like we have a big label with an office and 50 people or anything,” and he has no plans yet to sign more artists — although he does says that, “If I ran across somebody I believe in or feel I could help ’em, maybe I would.”

Meanwhile, he’s happy for ACR to be his own home, and he says EMI is already starting to talk about a follow-up to “Thirty Miles West” — even if Jackson himself isn’t thinking about it yet.

“I’ve been so lucky. There are no set of rules in my career,” he says. “I’ve pretty much always had control of everything; I had such good success in the beginning that once you get rolling, if it’s working good, people are like, ‘Don’t mess with him,’ and they haven’t.

“So I’ve had a lot of freedom to record what I wanted and release what I wanted at whatever pace I wanted. I feel like I’ll get in the groove here at some point and get rolling (on a new album), but I’m not pushing that yet.”